Luke 140 - Plantation FEI - Sept ‘23

This is a video for the Luke 140 syndicate. Well, guys, we took Luke 140 to the Plantation International. This is a four star short that we were using to prepare Luke to the Maryland five Star, which is sort of coming up quickly. It's in about four weeks time. And this is Luke's dressage which was Friday afternoon. It was beautiful weather, 70 degrees and Luke did a ripper of a test. We've had Bettina Hoy at the farm earlier the week coaching me dressage and we really felt like we really improved Luke in the dressage. He won the dressage which was fantastic. What did he get a score of? I think he got a score of like 28 or 27, which was obviously a very, very good, good score, 27.7. And he was the best of a very strong field of horses. There was I think 60 horses in the field and Luke was good. We had a, he was quite nervous. It's a very electric ring sort of on top of a hill and the horses get quite nervous and hot when you compete the dressage there. And Luke was, he was a good boy. He was a little bit wild when I rode him that morning on the flat and then he got a little bit tense in the, in the walk, which you'll see in a moment. But all in all the, the quality of the work is getting better and better. Unfortunately, the following day, which was Saturday and monsoon hit Pennsylvania which was horrible. It just started raining and raining and raining and raining and turned into a bit of a disaster. Sadly. By the time the four Star went cross country on Sunday it was so wet and I'd actually taken my first horse, Contessa and sadly had a fall on her. And I hopped on Luke and warmed him up for the cross country and he felt fantastic. And then I was watching a number of the other horses go cross country and there was just fall after fall and horses are slipping and sliding and guys, I decided to withdraw Luke and just save him for another day. I was sort of in a position where obviously I'm sure Luke could have jumped around the course well, but I also, my vet was there and we were just terrified that, that we could pick up an injury or worse than that. Well, equally as worse, if Luke had a slip or a slide and had a mishap, cross country would be forever kicking ourselves. So anyway, it's not ideal. We're coming into Maryland five star without a run yet because we obviously withdrew from Great Meadow with the rock hard ground. Now we've withdrawn from Plantation because it was too wet and muddy. So anyway, we're looking at maybe trying to do an intermediate next Sunday up in New Jersey, which it'd be good just to have one run with Luke. The great thing with Luke, he was so good at Le Moulin five star. I think he's obviously very, very capable of jumping around Maryland five Star. It'd be just nice to have one competition where we could give him a bit of a gallop around and he could pop through a couple water jumps and whatnot. But as we all know with horses, nothing seems to quite go to plan. Anyway, back to this test. Obviously this is one of the better tests that Luke's ever done. The exciting part is that there's still a lot of room for improvement come Maryland five star. So I think in this phase we're looking really, really good. Now the show jumping obviously was the next day, which was horrible conditions for Luke. It was. You can't really tell on the video here, but it was so windy. The ground was wet and boggy and muddy and Luke was fired up. He jumped well. We had one pole down, which you'll see in a moment. This is the hard part with Luke is he sees the jump and he's just overly keen to get to the fen training and schooling at home and in the warm up practice ring we can keep him relaxed. But when he gets into the ring here you can see him just sort of want to take over a bit and sort of race at the jump. Now the great thing with Luke is he's a very, very careful jumper and usually he sort of runs at the jump and then at the last minute he picks his toes up. Unfortunately, you'll see in a minute that our luck or his skill of doing ran out a little bit. My coach, Peter Wilde was here jump schooling me earlier in the week. Actually, I'll show you a bit of the training at home, but you can just see here when he gets a bit roguey and runs at the jumper, but he just ticked that one behind. So I think we're going to try just a slightly different bit which sort of as he gets aggressive to the jump, can keep his frame down, keep his head down. I think also once we get to Maryland five star, he'll be show jumping after the cross country, which on most horses is a huge disadvantage. And with Luke it's actually an advantage of having him a little bit exhausted and tired from the cross country. So I just thought I'd pop these videos on here. This is our jump training with Peter Wild. The Wednesday before the competition, he was kind enough to come down to the farm and school us over the course. And at home here, we've sort of got Luke to a place where he's a lot more relaxed and rideable. And my goal in life is to try and get him this calm at the competition, which is quite the challenge. Quite the challenge. But he's a big event horse. I feel like when we're at Maryland, five star, get him settled in there for the week, he'll be a little bit easier to ride.